first draft for freaky trigger

warhol is one of the cheif poets of mechincal reproducion and everything he does an be associated with isolating the artists had--his deawings at fierst, were for books and magazines;his paintings were screen prints done by others;he abondened this for film that required no direcion and when direction was nessceary andy go paul morissey in on the action. His novels were dicated and so were he Interviews for Interview magazine--and thru out his life he traced, making his own images out of the dross of mechincal techinque.

he had an obsession with motion picture magazines from the beginning, intercessors of intercessors, and his obsession with these machines twined with a casual and effective draftsmanship was create because of this mechincal reproduction--of the magazines that came from printing presses, of the camera (both still and film), of the vehicle and the truck that borught them to the little queer kid in philadeplhia, his style was creaed because of his desire for cyberntic union, and later was done for it.

which is why the prep drawings for the 1962 DIY paint by number screen prints are so seismic a change in how one views Warhols work (thats the thing with Warhol, he produced so much and so obsessively that when you get a frame someone uncovers another sash of work that unsettles it all--or in the words of Bruce Hainley in an interview with Wayne Kostenbaum published by Art Forum in Novemember 2002--"Because of how much Andy Warhol Produced , theres always more then can be remembered.")

the prep drawings are small, crude ungraceful--they lack the americanized cocteau lightness of his boy book from 1956, the cheerfull commericalism of shoes, the daisy fresh cats and lips, or the lurid smearing of the sceen prints done, where the "bad" qauilty (lack of technique and formal skill) were reflected by a feidilty of source (tabloids) and a respect for exactly what the machine could do (the thing about the screen prints, was that every smear was an indication of how the product was created, that it was not created by artists skill bu by machines mistake). As opposed to these paint by number prep drawings, where the colouring ouisde of the lines seems to be because of lack of skill rather then any mechanic energy.

the larger paint by numbers prints are pure americana schmaltz and at first view its assumed that he just blew up a commerically availbe rural scene, and one of his assitants paint the scenes half way until the assitant got lazy and bored or the theoritcal work was completed. (because being easy, lazy, bored, a flanuer who did not want to walk, was something to be expected and this laziness had theoritical baggage, almost a punch line) ( this reminds me of watching the antique roadshow on Feb. 2 2005 and seeing a perfect warholian moment. i watched an appraiser for a new york auction house being unable to tell whether a small 1950s oil sketch of a elm and red barn landscape was a Thomas Hart Benton or a paint by number--and the only way the could find out was turpentine--even x rays would not have worked).

Which really recentralizes how much the act of object creation was for Warhol, how even though his hand would fail at the precise craft of mahine colour and machine drawing, he attempted anyways--which may expalin any number of his difficult painterly quirks through out his oeurve (ie in the over the top teal eyeshadow, and lurid oleo coloured hair of the Gold Marylin done in the same year as the Paint by Number drawings im talking about here or the smeared canvases on some of the ambulances or the 1970s and 1980s portaits with the ab ex detailing---a detail that Robert Rosenblum talks about as a continuation of his obsession with painterly techinque and to engage in a tension between subject (cold, shallow, formal, historical, empty) and form (warm, complex, wild, almost amauterish) or the work he did with keith harring and jean michael basquit near the end of his life).

This drawing, aside from dealing with issues of form, craft and object can also explain the use of colour or at least this is how David Batchelor explains in his brilliant book Chromophobia, using the prpe drawing as an illustration to a chapter called Apocolypstick, after the Serge Gainsbourgh, he calls into question the cannonical cold formalism of Andy, moving him ino a painterly obsessivness, a creamy, campy, colouyr fieldest. The chapter is about colour as a signifier of decadence--qouting Baudlieare and Gainsboug among the other realvenet French. He talks about Warhol who brings trash tolife-not the literal trash of supposed low culture (tabloids and moviews, not the literal low trash reclaimed by the theoritcal conbtent but a formalis t low trash, a low trash of mark making, colour, and techinque.

Warhol's use of colour , according to Baetchor, is decorative, cosemitc, fun, strange, transgressive and transformative (really, it is all colour that works this way it seems to me in reading this--the whole book is about how in western culture colour is avoided as something both silly and dangerous, the unstablizing of pleasure that occurs whenever what is assumed to be frivilous is foregrounded, its just that Warhol is one of the absoulte best at it--its one of the reasons why Clement Greenberg had to spend 1000s of pages killing decoration when he trumpted colour field---how he had to make all of it a moral issue and how avant garde and kitsch reads like a mid modernist Zwinligi---and how Warhol is really a libertine who topples protestant joylessness). It is the danger of our formalis selves--that which is brightly coloured is that which can be dismissed as carnivalisque.

In fotos it took until William Eaggleston in the 1970s befoie a seriouus colourist made it into the musu8ems--to use an example (and there is really not any photographer working whos colour is as intergral ot meaning and theory as eagleston--even the snapshot fotographers of the late 80s often sacrificed form to other things---Nan Goldin being the example that c omes to mind. Batechlor picks this up in Chromophobia, qouting Walker Evans about William Eaggleston, he says "INSERT QUOTE HERE"

So Warhol as colourist was the colour of the other (the immigrant other, the foirmal other, the social other, the other of Ruthian churches, mobie stars, immigrant costume, colour that transcended meaning and theory and word--cosmetics of mechincal redproduction--which became an assult to seriousness; its pretty and because its pretty, is worth pushing forward a decorative , scadalaised and aesthetic...or as Baetchlor qaoutes Barthes "it is chemaical in that it agressively refers to the artifice of chemistry, in its oppostion to nature ..."(61)(which is why the paint by numbers where against nature, they were the mockery of authentic artiss bringing plein air eyes to specefic scenes--it is then a chemical pacakaging of ideological america--but it is even more of a twist then that, becuse he uses the skills of traditonal artists to mock both artifice and realism--through a cosmetic blankness.)

This would explain the radical reclamtion of paint by numbers flowers, the insnae colours, dictate by companies, that also made foof fyue and make companies; compaines between warhols past in Philly and Present in New York--(by extenstion work that bridged the gap between make work projectys instituted by his mother and done by the young Andrew Warhola and make work projects in the opposite direction.

The question then--if Warhol reclaims commerical crassness as formalist mastepeice then isnt the point to reduce the authou--Andy as theoriust. By having a hand coloured, smaredm befuddled, graceless work, a work that looks like its been worked over, there is a redemption of craft--He is an artist again, whose concerns are not about what is painting or what the difference between commerical and fine art is, or what chemical and cosmetic perfection can do to new artsits (what does he deveolpment of techonolgy do to the Artist for example--how do the sex parts poloroids of andy in the 70s differ from F Holland DAys daugertypes, the sexual ambiguity, the devolpment of personae, the conflation of personal idenitiy and religous obsession, the strange annonymity--all of these are the same in these two works, and the unique object is invented in each process--whats the difference ?)

Were any of this addresed, it doesnt mtter as much as making sure that Warhols reclaiming and negation of formal categoties is addressed--or, Blatechor agaoin, "A perverse reherasl of the academic habit of composition--contour-chichousco-colour" (61). However perverse this s eems, the work on the content of Warhol, the baggage of gender, sex(uality), statusm and class aare seeing to be wrestled in a million grad schools (see the freudian wank job that was Wayne Kaustenbuams Penguin Lives biography for a rather obsessive vision of this)

Using a unique object of hadicraft reground discusssion of the political implication of coloour, shape lione-decoratioing, cosmetic, serous and camp in all in one, is an ingenious and enw way of introducing new exculpory evidence. By exenstion--maybe we can note how lovely tyhe gold of maryline is, or how strange and hygenic the two white albumance (1963) are or how ineffective the green of the Iranian princess (1981) is in realtion to the death plalor of Nixon (1972)--or even what it means when Nixon and Mao are the smae colour. Form as poliical replication, someting needed to look at, as crtiics as well as viewers.